


Name and Blood

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Silver Branch - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 10:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a quiet, private moment, Hilarion asks his lover for the story behind the dolphin ring he wears. Alexios obliges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Name and Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Coming Around Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/303232) by [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix). 



Alexios raised his head from Hilarion’s shoulder. From the other side of the window in the ducenarius’s quarters came the soft sound of fat wet snow-flakes striking the thick cloudy pane, as they had done all day before dark had fallen. Beyond that was the sough of the wind. The storm that had blown in from the Oceanus Britannicus was in no hurry to quit Gallia Belgica.

He listened to the quiet but incessant _pit, pit, pit_ of the snow for a long moment, idly calculating how many Attacotti would be needed on shovelling duty in the morning, before he lowered his head again to gaze at his companion. Hilarion’s eyes were half-lidded, the corners of his mouth turned ever so slightly upward, as he idly stroked Alexios's wrist with two fingers.

Alexios had, over time, acquired a fondness for Hilarion as the world usually saw him, mocking and indolent. He knew what lay beneath those defences: courage, loyalty, honour, and — though Hilarion would have denied it to anyone else — kindness. And he enjoyed stripping those defences away when they were alone, with hands and lips and other things, as Hilarion himself had taught him.

Afterward, there was another reward, that of seeing Hilarion completely unguarded — and happy, something he had far too infrequently been in his life. That was something they two had in common.

As if he could hear Alexios’s thoughts, Hilarion began to stir. He left off caressing Alexios to rest his fingertips against the great flawed emerald that formed the bezel of Alexios’s heavily battered signet ring. Then one finger traced the curve of the leaping dolphin in the intaglio.

“I’ve often meant to ask you the tale behind this,” he said, light-blue eyes sharpening with curiosity. “Especially why a man called ‘Eagle’ would wear a ring bearing the image of a dolphin.”

Alexios smiled. “ _That_ part, nobody knows. Dolphins are sacred to Apollo, and they bear the souls of dead heroes to the Fortunate Isles. They’re said to bring good luck when sighted at sea. Perhaps I’ve some distant and unknown ancestor who was a sailor — or who won the ring from a sailor while dicing in a _taberna_. What I do know is that the ring belonged to my father, and my father’s father before him, stretching back nearly two hundred and thirty years, when the first Aquila came to Britannia from Etruria.”

His father, who had been getting on in years when Alexios was born and died when he was still a boy, had told him the story several times. The first time he had heard it, though, had been from his father’s great-aunt Honoria, with Alexios perched on her bony knee. He had been very young at the time, too young to absorb most of the details; she had been very old, and she had died not long after. But still he could remember her voice, as clear as cut glass, as she declaimed the tale in the cadences of an orator and with the authority of an empress.

After the dreadful retreat from Castellum that had left few besides himself and Hilarion alive, he had thought of his lauded ancestor, the second Aquila to come to these shores, and had hoped he would have been proud of this descendant of his. But the second Aquila’s own story was not one he had thought of in years, let alone spoken.

“Two hundred and thirty years,” Hilarion said softly as he continued to trace the lines of the intaglio, his voice at once awed and wistful. Alexios understood the wistfulness, and his heart ached. But then Hilarion continued: “Pray tell me of this ancestor of yours. What was his name?”

“His name,” Alexios said, “was Marcus Flavius Aquila. He was _primus pilus_ of the Ninth Legion, which disappeared without a single trace into what was then the completely wild North. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Hadrian ordered the wall that now bears his name to be built.”

“Nothing was ever found of an entire legion of men?” Hilarion asked, one brow dipping in disbelief.

“For ten and more years, no. Then his son, also called Marcus Flavius Aquila, came to Britannia. He’d served bravely in Judaea, and he asked to be transferred here because he wished to discover what had happened to his father and his father’s men.”

“And did he?”

“He did,” Alexios replied, “but not with his own legion, the Second, which was stationed in the far South. He took a grievous wound in battle; he saved his fort and his men, but the injury put an end to his soldiering days, and he was discharged with honour. When he was sufficiently healed in body and spirit, he decided to journey north on his own to learn the fate of the Ninth. He travelled with his freedman, a Brigantes warrior called Esca, whom Marcus had saved from death in the arena and then purchased for a body-slave.”

“And what did he find, in the North?”

“He found a survivor who’d melted into the glens and taken a British woman to wife. The man said the Ninth had been cut down almost entirely by the Epidaii, who held sway near the mouth of the Cluta where now the Dalriadans do. The Epidaii had taken the legion’s Eagle standard, as well as this ring. They thought the standard was a god, and they kept it at an altar in a cave. Their chieftain wore the ring on his own hand.”

“I presume blood was spilt in the retrieval of both,” Hilarion said drily.

“I presume so as well. But how much, and whose, and how it was spilt are all unclear. Oh, there are stories and songs that have come down. Of course, they conflict with one another — and you know as well as I do how much credence one should give most tales of brave deeds done in battle.”

Hilarion snorted, and Alexios continued: “There was a song that went about for a while, I am told, of Marcus and Esca fending off an entire village of Epidaii warriors bare-handed, then seducing all their women in a single afternoon. I venture to say the story-teller may have exaggerated slightly.”

“Or perhaps he didn’t,” Hilarion replied, straight-faced. “I may have done something like that, once or twice.”

Alexios grinned. “Liar. You’d have bested all the warriors, then seduced _them_ instead.”

“Well, all right, there _is_ that small detail. As well as that their women would have all lamented for a good month afterward, as the men would have remained satisfied for that long.” Hilarion maintained his lack of expression until Alexios chuckled, and then he broke into a wide grin himself.

After a pause, he said reflectively, “The freedman must have esteemed him greatly, to go north with him. I imagine the tribes loved Rome even less then than they do now, and this — Esca, was it? — had been a slave.”

“Esca was manumitted _because_ Marcus wouldn’t command him to make such a journey under duress,” Alexios said. “He was given a choice, and he made his choice. He was fulfilling a debt of honour, as Marcus had saved his life. Eventually, there was friendship as well as obligation between them.”

At this, Hilarion raised his head and, with brows arched and one corner of his mouth quirking, gave Alexios a glance full of meaning. “Friendship, and friendship alone?”

Alexios had never wondered if it might have been anything but friendship — why would he have? He opened his mouth to protest, instinctively, that his ancestor would _never_ — and then he caught himself, and he could not suppress a wry smile.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Harpers and drunkards tend not to sing of such matters, as I’m sure you’ve noticed," Alexios said. “The ultimate fate of the Eagle is a long story that I’ll save for another time. As for Marcus, he took an Iceni girl for a bride after he returned from the North, and then he and Esca raised a farming villa on the Chalk Downs — in the far South,” he added, when Hilarion tilted his head in inquiry. “The three of them lived out their days at that villa, which has come down through the generations, as has the ring.”

“And which of them do you resemble?” Hilarion said, his face completely straight once more.

Alexios glared at him, this time genuinely offended. Hilarion, damn him, began to chuckle. “For a man who has survived so much and who leads men so ably," he finally said, "you can be remarkably naïve.”

“You are speaking of my _ancestor!_ ” Alexios exclaimed. “You imply I might not be of his blood!”

“And what if you weren’t? You’re of his _name_. And I daresay his freedman would have made an equally illustrious ancestor. But, two hundred and more years later, the name is all that matters.”

Hilarion paused again. Then his expression, and his voice, turned solemn. “I have my father’s blood, Alexios. I don’t have his name, nor anything else of him. Had a man not of my blood given me his name, I would have led a much easier life. And my mother would have, too, for that matter.”

He had only ever spoken once of this to Alexios, when the latter was a new Wolf, and in the most offhanded manner possible: _long before my time, or my father’s if I’d ever had one_. But a lack of parentage was no shocking thing among the Third Ordo. As each grew in his regard for the other, Alexios sometimes reflected on it. It was not difficult, he thought, to see how the hardship of bastardy could lead a man to build up a façade of insouciance, to let the world think nothing could hurt him.

“I won’t say it would have been easier for me to have no father’s name,” he said slowly, his anger having ebbed. “I certainly wasn’t raised in penury, nor was my mother or I scorned. But it’s a difficult name to live up to.”

“Abusina,” Hilarion said, and his right hand quickly shifted to cover Alexios’s.

“Abusina,” Alexios echoed flatly, his gaze drifting downward before he closed his eyes briefly.

“It was a heavy decision to be left to an untried cub.” There was a gravity in Hilarion’s voice that few but Alexios ever heard.

Alexios shook his head. “I wasn’t completely innocent of blame, Hilarion. I could have insisted to my uncle that I come up through the ranks like any other man. I was hardly his favourite; likely he would have agreed. More to the point, I could have taken the advice I was given by an old soldier under my command.” He blew out his breath and stared at a point on the opposite wall. “But I didn’t, and … the man died, and many other good men as well.”

Though he kept his hand over Alexios’s, Hilarion remained silent. Alexios was glad of it. The unspoken compassion of another man who had himself erred profoundly was far better than meaningless words of absolution. Ill deeds could not be undone, no matter how either of them had since redeemed himself.

Eventually he spoke again. “To give your mocking question a serious answer: I take the colour of my eyes from my father, and I have a bit of my mother and her kin in my face. But otherwise I am cut from the same cloth as Marcus Flavius Aquila, father and son alike. They were short and wiry, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with very Roman features. Thanks to the British blood there have been some fair-complected scions of the Aquila family, like my father, whose hair was red. But most have been small, dark, and Roman-looking. Like me.”

“So, then, the Aquilas have produced a long line of beautiful as well as valiant men?” Hilarion was smiling again. There was mockery in his smile again, but only a trace.

Alexios smiled in turn. “If you wish to sum up my family in such a manner, I don’t object,” he said, bringing up his right hand to stroke Hilarion’s cheek.

Hilarion clasped Alexios’s hand in his once more and pressed a soft and silent kiss to the back of it. Then he touched his lips to the the cool surface of the carved stone, with its elegant dolphin and its many hidden stories, before leaning forward to seek Alexios’s lips instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Opalmatrix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix) for her excellent beta work on this story.
> 
> I wrote it in early November, and then Opalmatrix beta'ed it. And **then** she told me that Flavius in _The Silver Branch_ , which I hadn't yet read, was almost certainly Alexios's father (see [the endnotes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/303232#work_endnotes) to her lovely _TSB_ fic "Coming Around Again" for a timeline). So I decided to read _TSB_ before Yuletide, which I did, and I decided I had to work a few allusions to it into this fic. "Coming Around Again" inspired me to make it clear that Honoria did, at least, get to meet Alexios before she died.
> 
> I'm aware that in _TSB_ , Flavius has not learned anywhere near as many details about the plot of _EOT9_ as I have Alexios recount to Hilarion. In fact, in _TSB_ Esca is not even mentioned. I suppose it would have been realistic that the contributions of a freedman would not have made it into family lore. It's entirely possible, though not probable, that Honoria could have turned up further information in the quarter-century between the events of _TSB_ and Alexios's birth. In any case, I thought it was worth fudging the canon a wee bit for the sake of the fic.
> 
> Sineala has jokingly wondered a few times how many of "Marcus's" and Cottia's children might have resembled Esca. That wasn't the entire gem of my idea for this story, but I could easily imagine the same question occurring to Hilarion, who would have had no compunction about asking it aloud — even to Alexios. Maybe, as I said in comments, especially to Alexios.


End file.
